NPR on TPP: "It's A Beast"

[ucrdem]

29. Not. It's a gimmick dreamed up by this guy's pals:

In other words it's not in the TPP or in the TPA legislation approved by the senate. It's just a dumb GOP gotcha inserted into the House TPA billl that has yet to be voted on much less reconciled or sgned into law:

a provision slipped into a measure to extend and increase the government's Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides assistance to workers who lose their jobs because of trade deals. . . . introduced by Rep. David Reichert (R-Wash.), proposes covering some of the $2.7-billion cost of the extension by slicing $700 million out of doctor and hospital reimbursements for Medicare.

{snip}

The Medicare cut is slated to go into effect in fiscal 2024, which gives it the flavor of a budget gimmick. The chances are good that lawmakers will revisit the cut long before it goes into effect--and the budget landscape a decade from now is certain to look very different from today's. The $700 million cut is the equivalent of about 14 hundredths of one percent of Medicare's budget today ($500 billion).


http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-25/house-adopts-plan-to-boost-u-s-war-funds-while-cutting-medicare

If it smells like a stinkbomb and it's tossed by stinkers, you can bet without doing any googling that it's a stinkbomb. But I did it anyway and sure enough, it's a stinkbomb.